Mama to two little boys, Lilo (3 and a half years) and Ju (5 years), I blog about our crafting, baking and general activities.

Saturday, 22 December 2012

A (digital) letter to Santa

We haven't written our letter to Santa yet, so we thought we might use the powers of the Internet to speed things up a bit, as it is only 3 days to Christmas; who knows how long it would take for our postcard to reach the North Pole? There are many free websites that let children enter their wishlist online and send a reply for Santa. We sent two online letters to Santa today and had fun on those two websites with different digital activities.

North Pole
On this website, we had to create an account, but the user interface was very friendly, with hardly any adverts (all of them easy to ignore). The main page was Santa's secret village, from which a range of activities was available, such as listening to stories, songs, a crafts section, possibility to send e-cards, etc... There were games which were well suited to pre-schoolers, including a memory game which both Ju and Lilo enjoyed greatly. The stories we listened to involved reindeer and elves, and even though the story reader sounded a bit computer-generated, the boys enjoyed listening to the different stories.

The letter to Santa was well laid out for pre-schoolers, with a pictorial selection of toys to choose from for their wish list, as well as space to enter their own wish list. On top of Ju's wish list this year is a sprayer, which we hope Santa has in his workshop. Ju's special message to Santa was "Happy Birthday and Thank you". I think perhaps his understanding is that Jesus and Santa are the same person. This site allows parents to word their own letter from Santa in reply to their child's.

Screenshot from our letter to Santa on Northpole.com

A Letter 4 Santa
For this website, we didn't have to create an account, but the site was full of clickable adverts. The range of activities was more limited than the North Pole and not as well presented. The games sections was also aimed at older children, unfortunately for us. The sing along section was lovely, although we didn't know most of the songs on it. We couldn't watch anything in the movies section as they were restricted to US viewers. Ju really enjoyed the online colouring book.

The letter to Santa was decently laid out, and as a bonus, we got a well-worded reply straight away on screen. All in all, we preferred the North Pole website to A Letter 4 Santa, but the latter had the distinct advantage of allowing us to remain anonymous.